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Rosemary's birth was unexpected. Not because it was one of those cryptic pregnancies, where they didn't know she was even in there until the contractions started, but more because neither of them had really been fully prepared to have a baby in the house.
Sleepless nights, lots of crying—and not just from Rosemary—and Ethan finds himself wondering, more than once, if either of them were actually prepared to have a child. He stands in the kitchen, staring at the wall, and is startled from his thoughts by the unexpected voice of Eveline behind him.
"Babies are weird."
He flinched, letting out a small breath as he turned to face her. "Yeah, I guess they are," he replied, once he'd gathered himself. He returned to making Rosemary's bottle, Eveline coming to stand beside him. "What are you doing? I thought you were helping Mia with getting Rosemary ready for bed?"
"Mommy yelled at me."
Ethan sighed. There had always been tension between Mia and Eveline, since he had made the choice of taking Eveline in rather than killing her or allowing her to return to a lab once more, living the rest of her life as an experiment.
It's not a surprise that it's gotten worse since Rosemary was born.
"She didn't want me to touch the baby."
Ethan chooses his words carefully. "Mia's never been happy with my choice to take you in."
"She never wanted to be my mommy."
He sighed. "No," he agreed. "She didn't."
Eveline shuffled slightly. "You never wanted to be my daddy."
Ethan hesitated. "I didn't know about you," he replied. "I just came for Mia—"
"'I'm not playing'," Eveline quoted and Ethan flinched at the recollection of his own words, as he had all but brandished a gun in the litlte girl's face, weilding the E-series necrotoxin, making it clear what he intended to do. "No! Get that away from me!"
"Eveline—" he tried, but the girl had slipped out of his reach, backing away. In the back of his mind, he knew he was being stupid. Eveline's real body—the old woman, frail and weakened—was upstairs, in bed, in her room. This, the little girl he was looking at, was only the hallucination, the projection she allowed them.
The BSAA hadn't been able to cure them of the infection, not while Eveline was still alive and not with Ethan's outright refusal to allow them to kill her or take her back to a lab. Mia, it had been determined, had been infected for far too long to be cured. The cure would have killed her, her organs more molded than tissue.
So they still saw the Eveline the girl wanted them to see, but no longer did she try and hurt them, or control them. She just wanted a family and for a long time, Mia and Ethan—despite their own traumas from that house—had done everything they could to give her that.
And then Rosemary was born and Mia had changed. She ignored Eveline, yelled at her, no longer even tolerated her presence as she had once before and reluctant as he was to admit it, Ethan knew exactly why she felt that way.
She had a 'real' daughter now. Up until Rosemary's birth, she'd only barely tolerated Eveline and maybe, until now, had viewed her as some sort of 'stand-in' daughter until they'd had their real one.
"I'm still your daddy," he told her, kneeling down on her level. "And Mia…"
"She doesn't want to be my mommy."
"She went through a lot of stuff in that house," Ethan told her. "She was scared and you…you weren't very nice to her, Eveline." Eveline looked away, a scowl on her face. "She's tried so hard for the last few years—"
"But now she replaced me."
Ethan sighed. "I'm not going to kick you out, just because Rosemary's been born," he promised her. "Give Mia time."
"I've given her three years."
"There's no timer on how long it might take someone to recover from trauma," he told her. "It's been years since you were in a lab, but I bet that still scares you, doesn't it? I see it in the way you interact with both of us, in the way you interact with Mia. You're still afraid she's going to send you back even though it's been years, right?" Eveline nodded. "Well, Mia's afraid you might try and take control of her again, even though it's been years since you did last."
"I won't hurt her."
"And she won't hurt you," Ethan pointed out. "But that doesn't make you feel any different, does it?"
Eveline fell silent as she thought about his words. Sighing, Ethan straightened up and finished preparing Rosemary's bottle. The kitchen was quiet for a long time before Eveline whispered,
"Am I still your daughter?"
Ethan turned towards her. "Why wouldn't you be?" Eveline didn't reply. Ethan grabbed Rosemary's bottle and asked, "Want to come meet your sister?"
Eveline hovered in the doorway, watching Mia feet Rosemary while Ethan stands nearby. Despite his attempts to prompt Eveline into the room—"you won't hurt Rosemary and Mia won't learn that unless you prove it"—Eveline had insisted in remaining just outside the door. But that doesn't stop her from whispering in Ethan's mind,
"She's infected." Ethan's eyes dart down towards Rosemary as he fights any instinct to move or react, not wanting to startle or worry Mia. She already hates Eveline. She won't take the news that Rosemary is infected well. "You're both infected. There was no way she wouldn't be." Eveline shifts uneasily in the doorway and Mia glances at her briefly, a slight scowl on her face before she turns her attention back to the baby in her arms. "I didn't do this."
"I know."
She doesn't say anything else to him, just walks away and he lets her go because while Mia has ignored Eveline and their connection as desperately as she could, Ethan had leaned into it, providing Eveline the care and famly she'd always wanted.
He doesn't follow her. He knows she needs space.
Ethan wakes to Mia shaking him, Rosemary's cry in the distance, down the hall.
"Your turn," Mia mumbled, and he'd dragged himself from under the sheets and down the hall. When he finally made it to Rosemary's room, she'd stopped crying and when he stepped inside, he found Eveline standing on her toes, peering into the crib.
As soon as she turned and saw Ethan, she frantically backed away as she snapped, "I didn't hurt her!"
Ethan isn't sure what to say to that, as he walks over to the crib—don't run, don't rush, don't make Eveline think you prefer Rosemary over her, don't make her feel like you're turning into Mia—and peers down at Rosemary who is completely relaxed, squirming and looking around.
"Did you calm her down?" Ethan asked, scooping Rosemary into his arms as he looked over at Eveline, who refused to meet his gaze.
"I heard her crying," Eveline replied. "I just wanted to see why."
"And she stopped crying when you came in?" Eveline nodded. "Okay." Her gaze snapped to him when she didn't hear anger in his voice. "If she's infected too, maybe she has some sort of connection to you, the way I do." And Mia, but Eveline had been kind enough to not talk in Mia's head, the way she talked in Ethan's. A trauma bond, the internet had said when Ethan had done his best to try and describe the situation without putting his family on some sort of watch list.
"I can't control her."
"Okay."
"I can't!" Eveline stomped her foot. "I'm not lying!"
"I didn't think you were," Ethan soothed as he carried Rosemary over to the rocking chair, sitting down carefully. When he says nothing more and doesn't tell Eveline to leave, the girl shuffles over and peers down at Rosemary.
"Mia would scream at me," she said quietly. "If she ever found me in here with her."
"I'm not Mia."
"I know. You're nicer than she is." Eveline slowly sank to the floor on her knees, staring up at Ethan and Rosemary as her voice dropped and she whispered, "She never liked me, did she? All she ever saw was…was a weapon. I was never a person to her. She lied to me."
Ethan sighed. "You know, Eveline," he began. "Mia lied to me too."
Eveline blinked, staring up at him in surprise. "Really?"
"I never knew what she really did," Ethan said. "She sent me a video, while she was on that ship with you. Said she was almost done with a babysitting job. She…she never seemed to like her job."
"Babysitting," Eveline repeated, turning away. And he knew she didn't mean it, she was just upset, but for a second Ethan felt Eveline's rage towards Mia flare up in his own chest. He took a deep breath to calm himself.
"Eveline?" She refused to look at him. "I made sure the BSAA couldn't kill you, because I knew it wasn't right. I didn't leave you behind and I didn't kill you so Mia and I could get cured. I saved you. I wouldn't do that if I felt like taking care of you was just babysitting."
"Mia thinks it's babysitting."
Actually, Ethan's pretty sure Mia feels like a hostage in her own home, still having Eveline here, but he also doesn't think that's a smart thing to voice, considering the current topic of conversation.
"I don't," Ethan re-emphasized. "And that's why you latched onto me, right?"
Eveline shifted. "Yeah," she said softly. "I guess."
"Everything's going to be okay, Eveline," Ethan told her. "I promise."